Pilgrims

by Elizabeth Gilbert Narrated by Coleen Marlo

Overview

The debut by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love, Big Magic and City of Girls; a PEN/Hemingway Award finalist and New York Times Notable Book


When it appeared in 1997, Elizabeth Gilbert's story collection, Pilgrims, immediately announced her compelling voice, her comic touch, and her amazing ear for dialogue. “The heroes of Pilgrims . . . are everyday seekers” (Harper's Bazaar)-brave and unforgettable, they are sure to strike a chord with fans old and new.

Editorial Reviews

Detroit Free Press

Gilbert's spry stories roam from Wyoming to New York City, from Minnesota to Texas. Cowboys, strippers, magicians—her characters are "everyday people whose...rich exterior lives mask simple, if brave, hopes and dreams.

Liam Callanan

The author 'embraces the bizarre and fabulous with similar enthusiasm.' -- The New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

A fine first collection of 12 stories that are richly varied in setting and content, and enlivened by their author's flair for vigorous dialogue and concise summary statement.

Gilbert's tales are ostensibly linked by the metaphor indicated by her book's title (and underscored by her use as epigraph of the opening lines of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales). It's true that all her characters seek respect or self-definition, and also that many of them are looking for love, of whatever kind is available, in all the wrong places with all the people likeliest to hurt or disappoint them. More-or-less conventional sexual situations are explored with economy and wit in the title story's account of a young cowboy's truculent relationship with a female ranch-hand, the Saroyan-like "Tall Folks" in which a woman saloon owner slakes her loneliness, as it were, by falling for her handsome young nephew, and the amusing "Landing," about a rootless woman's fascination with a sexy paratrooper. Gilbert strikes deeper with several more ambitious stories, most notably the resonant "Elk Talk," a skillful symbolic revelation of a woman's endangered idyllic life in the Wyoming mountains; "The Many Things That Denny Brown Did Not Know (Age Fifteen)" (Gilbert has a thing for unwieldy titles), a clever picturing of adolescent confusion, presented through an ingeniously handled omniscient narration; and "The Famous Torn and Restored Lit Cigarette Trick," a nicely understated account of a successful Hungarian immigrant in Pittsburgh whose violent nature becomes the guiding principle in his life. Ranging further still, Gilbert offers (in "At the Bronx Terminal Vegetable Market") a hauntingly vivid portrait of a naive porter who tries to convince himself he can run for president of his mob-controlled union.

The best kind of debut volume: a striking display of a versatile writer flexing her muscles and tackling a broad array of subjects and themes.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171907303
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	04/01/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged

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